1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for reducing power consumption in a portable terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for reducing power consumption using packet filtering in the portable terminal. That is, the present invention allows a modem to filter a packet in order to prevent an Application Processor (AP) from waking up from a sleep mode due to an unnecessary packet.
2. Description of the Related Art
Portable terminals have become necessities of modern life for people of all ages. Thus, service providers and terminal manufacturers are competitively developing various products and services.
For example, a portable terminal has developed into a multimedia device capable of providing various services, such as a phonebook, a game, a Short Message Service (SMS), an Electronic (E)-mail, a morning call, a Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG)-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer-3 (MP3) player, scheduling, a digital camera, a Multimedia Message Service (MMS), a wireless Internet, and the like.
Although the development of batteries is negligible in comparison with the rapid development of portable terminals, a required battery size is decreased due to portability of portable terminals, which results in the limitation of battery capacity.
In order to support more functions of the portable terminal with the limited battery capacity, power consumption of the portable terminal has to be reduced in addition to the increase of the battery capacity.
Therefore, in a case where the portable terminal may not operate for a specific time period due to the limited battery use, there is a need to increase a usage time by allowing the portable terminal to enter a sleep mode.
The sleep mode is a mode for switching a hardware module of the portable terminal to a sleep state. The hardware module wakes up from the sleep mode upon receiving a packet.
However, if the portable terminal wakes up upon receiving an unnecessary packet, the portable terminal unnecessarily wakes up from the sleep mode. This implies that unnecessary power consumption occurs due to the unnecessary wakeup.
The portable terminal does not filter a received packet, and thus provides an unnecessary packet to an Application Processor (AP). The AP wakes up to determine necessity of the received packet.
Since the AP directly wakes up to determine necessity of the received packet instead of performing packet filtering on the unnecessary packet, unnecessary power consumption occurs.
Accordingly, there is a need for an apparatus and a method for filtering a packet required in the AP to reduce power consumption of a portable terminal caused by the unnecessary wakeup.